Immigrants & Intellectuals. May’ 68 & The Rise of Anti-Racism in France

Cote : GORD

This book tells, for the first time, the full story of the rise and fall of a cycle of protest movements for the rights of migrant workers from 1961 to 1983. Based on more than a decade of research in France, including special access to normally closed police archives, it reveals an encounter between two worlds, the immigrant and the intellectual. Highlighting links to international struggles from Portugal to Senegal, this book considers reactions to the massacre of Algerians in Paris in 1961; uncovers the hidden history of migrant worker participation in the general strike of 1968; shows how activists built creches for immigrants’ children and asks: how did immigrants view the New Left militants who sought to politicize them? It recounts how a hunger strike by a Tunisian activist leader in 1972 sparked a movement which mobilized some of France’s best-known thinkers from Sartre to Foucault, and brought this civil rights campaign into mainstream politics. After showing how the dreams of ’68 were buried and recycled, Gordon concludes with the legacy of this story for the politics of migration and the politics of protest today in France and beyond.

Daniel A. GORDON
2012
23,5 x 15,5 cm, 352 p.
Merlin Press